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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

What the President could do to get me back on board for the PRIMARY...

I am not sure at this point how the president can get me to feel good about voting for him. I am going to vote for him if Ron Paul is not nominated or a viable coalition alternative does not form. However, I would like to vote for him, believing he would advocate the right policy. The right policy would be make massive cuts in the military industrial catastrophe and apply the savings to massive government contracts to build the peaceful green economy.

Of course, anybody can tell you the political winds are massively against any more stimulus. Even if the President  made an about face and pushed for the stimulus our economy needs, he needs 60 progressive Senators to get it done. That was not possible 3 years ago and it is certainly not going to be possible 2 years from now. I see another 4 years of slow job growth if he is re-elected.

Unfortunately the only viable jobs creation plan coming from conventional politics is a policy of massive tax cuts combined with massive war stimulus and lax environmental and labor regulations. Look for huge increases in defense contracts and domestic oil and gas subsidies should a Romney clone get elected. And unfortunately, war and cheap gas are easy to sell, especially when the alternative is opaque green and extending tax cuts most folks don't know are already showing up in their paychecks (if they are getting one, of course).

A Romney clone victory and a substantial war stimulus will do huge damage to progressive policy making for years to come. I therefore cannot, for the life of me, see why progressives are not pushing infiltration to overthrow the Republican party.

Progressives need to change the debate. A Ron Paul coup means the general election debate becomes how much to cut empire building and maintenance budgets and how to use the savings from such cuts. A Romney clone opponent means Obama tries to prove he is not soft on defense and fiscal austerity. A Paul v. Obama campaign gets a larger number of libertarians and progressives in the Senate, maybe enough to slash the military industrial catastrophe.

So someone tell me again why I should vote in the primary for President Obama. Please give me or any other progressive one good reason to stay in the Democratic party for the primary!


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